2/23/2009:   Oh my gosh, this is funny: The Daily Kos has a snip from MSNBC in which John Feehery (pronounced "fairy") was blown out of the water. While slandering the stimulus bill as pork, he was completely unable to name even one section of the bill that could be characterized as pork:

Um... yeah. And that's pretty much how it goes everytime someone tries to nail down exactly what a Republican thinks is so porkalicious about the stimulus bill. Nice try, Johnny, very Palinesque.

2/23/2009:   During the party's convention in Sacramento on Sunday, the California Republican Party voted to deny party funding to three state senators and three state assemblymen for voting in favor of the state budget compromise that finally ended the budgetary stalemate that has brought state government and related offices grinding to a halt.

Those who voted for the punishment excused it by saying it sends a strong message to politicians that there will be consequences for breaking their no-tax pledge.

But then there were those who called a spade a spade, saying it was mean-spirited and that it pushes the party into an ideological corner.

Well, yeah. Duh.

So am I the only one that thinks a political party that dictates the platform to the extent that it destroys its members if they don't toe the line is a bit extreme? There's something very Nazi Party about killing someone's career if they don't take orders. So much for voting your conscience, huh?

The ghost of Gingrich can be smelled gumming up the works in this case. True, the Republicans have been doing this kind of thing since they impeached Andrew Johnson for going too easy on the repatriated Southern states, favoring instead that they be slowly bled to death fiscally. Yes, he was a flat-out racist, but the Republicans, already coopted by corporate business interests, could not have cared less about his civil rights leanings. They were more interested in the carpetbagging possibilities, and when it was clear their dog was biting the hand that fed it, they used his violation of The Tenure of Office Act, passed by Congress over Johnson's veto specifically to prevent him from replacing Edwin Stanton as Secretary of War. He attempted to do so anyway, and that was the excuse they used for impeaching him.

Even back then, party greed was so disturbing that seven men broke ranks, and because of them, Johnson missed conviction by one vote. Years later, the Tenure of Office Act was deemed unconstitutional. It was just a tool to unseat Johnson and protect the revenue stream the carpetbaggers enjoyed.

Funny, huh? Nowadays you can run roughshod over the Constitution and folks like Pelosi, Reid, and Obama will do their level best to make sure nothing happens. Yeah, that's right, I lumped Obama in there. He's doing his part to shield Bush and Cheney from prosecution, for no better reason than political expediency, justice be damned. But I digress. The Republican Party has always stood for corporations and elites, but no more so than under Newt Gingrich during his "Contract On America." You have him to thank for the mindset that says that power trumps lives.

Today it's no different. The GOP has, from its inception, been dedicated to wealth and corporate interests, and it will slap down any member that strays from those founding principles, which it holds sacred and superior to the interests of the common United States citizen.

2/23/2009:   On the 11th I expressed the view that the GOP members that are supported by the National Republican Trust PAC should feel the brunt of the anger building in this nation against those that oppose the stimumlus bill. Well, it turns out I'm not alone in this.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is going to start calling and emailing people in the states being hurt worst by Bush's Depression and being represented by a dozen House Republicans who voted against the stimulus bill and, thereby, against their constituents. They're going to inform those constituents that their Republican congressman voted “against the largest tax cut in history,” and against a $787 billion stimulus bill that the business friendly U.S. Chamber of Commerce supported. House Democrats have also created a Web site to explain how they believe the stimulus bill will affect individual congressional districts.

YEEHAW! They'll think they're being given hell, but the DCCC is just telling the truth on them, and they think it's hell. This is the way politics should be. Screw your people, get told on. Nuff said.

2/23/2009:   Sarah Palin is still blaming the media for doing a "search and destroy" on her. The obvious conclusion being that the principle behind a mirror has never been explained to her.

She found it, "very frightening, I think, what the media was able to get away with, this go-around... We are going to seek and we are going to destroy this candidacy of Sarah Palin’s because of what it is that she represents... This is for the sake of our democracy that there is fairness in this other branch of government, if you will, called the media... It is foreign to me the way some in the mainstream media are thinking.”

Sugar, sweetcakes, honeybunch... That foreign thing you're having a problem with is called, "Quotes." See, when the media films you asking simple questions like, "What do you typically read?", and plays it back to the entire nation, and the answer you give is something so ridiculous that it actually makes the viewer go momentarily slack-jawed with amazement, that's not a search and destroy mission. When you find your utterly incoherent answers played back and compared by pundits with Miss South Carolina's unfortunate babble, that's not a "go-around." Those were your words, and it is completely fair to air them when you're applying to be the second string for the most powerful position on the planet.

The media isn't a branch of government, it's a source of information, and, ignoring the blatant propogandizement of Faux News, you're not going to succeed in making mainstream media scary. No more so at least than Rupert Murdoch has already done.

Someone please pull her to one side and explain the concepts of preparedness, public speaking, and image to this poor dolt. The most painful part of this whole situation is that there are still people in the GOP that feel she was a great candidate. Sad, isn't it?

2/11/2009:   Three highly respected senior GOP senators broke ranks to support the $789 billion stimulus package espoused by Barack Obama. Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and Arlen Specter, who were part of the effort to negotiate compromises on the bill, voted to support it. Not that they needed to -- the Democrats had the passage of the bill sewn up -- but they voted for the American people.

And now there's a group that wants to make them pay for it.

"The American people don't want this trillion-dollar political payoff that will just line the pockets of non-governmental organizations who supported [President Barack] Obama in the election," lied Scott Wheeler, the executive director of The National Republican Trust PAC, an organization that, officially, calls for less government spending and lower taxes, but is really designed to kill off the government and the controls it places on the uber-rich and greedy elitists.

"Republican senators are on notice," he blustered. "If they support the stimulus package, we will make sure every voter in their state knows how they tried to further bankrupt voters in an already bad economy."

In other words, anyone attempted to shore up the economy and protect the middle class is seen as having taken sides against the richest 1% of the nation and can expect this organization to attack them like rabid, lie-spewing dogs.

So here's what I think: we, the American people, who Scott Wheeler and The National Republican Trust PAC are attacking indirectly by attacking those who would aid us in our time of crisis, must return fire. We need to make sure that this organization, the people that work for it, and the people it purports to support, feel our wrath. Any businesses that Scott Wheeler and Peter Leitner, as the lead traitors, are connected with should not be patronized. The politicians they support, like Michael Chambliss, Louie Gohmert, and John Boehner, should not receive your votes. This organization and the people it supports (read "influences") are as dangerous to our nation as Bush and Cheney were, if not more so.

I'm going to keep an occasional eye on these folks, and I'm going to make sure to research the candidates they support very carefully with an eye to the kind of anti-American politicies they espouse.

Because if you're against the economy, job creation, and equitable taxation with tax breaks for the middle class, then you're a Rushie that wants this country to fail.

2/9/2009:   Michael Steele, head of the RNC, is a moron. Or he expects you to be a moron, which, frankly, is a game plan that worked pretty well for the GOP in 2000 and 2004. The following is off the Daily Kos, a site I had never visited before, but it seems to really piss Bill O'Reilly off to no end, so it was inevitable that I just *had* to check it out. This is an actual conversation between Stephanopoulos and Steele on ABC News:

I know, huh?! No, he really said that. It's like he thinks he's a Jedi and he's actually able, simply by telling you that government jobs aren't real jobs, to convince you through mind control to believe it's true. That "work" isn't the same as "job" because somehow "work" is temporary. And that government jobs are work, but work at a small business is a job. That government jobs are only contractual, go away, and never come back. I guess the assumption is that a given person can only ever get one government job/contract/work, but small businesses are guaranteed to create permanent and ongoing jobs/contracts/work.

And he's pretending that putting money in people's pockets through a government job isn't... I don't know... real? That small business paychecks will fuel the economy, but government paychecks won't.

Oh, I know! It's almost laughable! But he was stone serious when he said it. And THIS is the best the GOP had to offer in the way of party leadership! OMG!!! Is that just crazy or what???

Alright, goofy conversational tone aside, Steele is insulting the intelligence of any critically thinking American. He's counting on his constituency falling back into "sheep" mode. He can't come up with a good argument against Obama's stimulus package, so he's trying to slander it with illogically redefined and half-defined terms. What an ass. Is leading the GOP into ruin. They can be remembered for playing fast and loose with the economy when people were in dire straits just to ring every last penny out of it to put into the pockets of the elites, or they can get on board and try to seriously put people back to work, earning a decent living wage, by any means necessary.

2/4/2009:   If you haven't heard Christian Bale's tirade on set in which he physically threatens a photography director, you have no idea how unprofessional he can be. Y'know, I've had people that screwed up my hard work before, but I have yet to spend three and a half minutes screaming profanities at any coworker and threatened to beat them up or destroy their work. I think after the movie is in the can, Shane Hurlbut should walk up to Bale and say, "Now that I don't have to worry about messing up your pretty little face, let's go."

Update 2/8/2009: I don't, as a rule, alter things I've already written except to correct grammatical or spelling errors. But this time I altered this entry because it was more strongly worded, and Bale actually came out and admitted, in a very open way, that he had behaved poorly and deserved the ridicule he was receiving. The recording of Bale is ugly, but apparently he and the DP have since resolved the issue, moved on, and worked together since. I felt it was fair to tone down the rhetoric a bit.

2/4/2009:   The GOP is in a sweat about Virginia. Over the last eight years, Virginians had to get smart about the GOP, and in 2008 that state voted for Obama. Now the GOP, ever clueless, is sending all its biggest stars to wow the state into swinging red: McCain, Thompson, and Jindal. Probably realizing the overwhelming cumulative creep factor in sending three decrepit, white, crypt-keepers, they're also trying to persuade Sarah Palin to bring a little cute dippyness to the proceedings.

Man, is the GOP fighting for its life or what? And the best they have is three guys that should have retired already, who represent the absolute worst of congressional Republicans and the Reagan-era, trickle-down theory, "Contract On America", elitist, rich-first, poor-last, rape-the-treasury, expend-our-youth-in-useless-wars, wipe-their-butts-with-the-Bill-of-Rights, we're-above-the-law, morally and ethically bankrupt era of Republican politics.

The GOP really is irrelevant. They just don't have the sense yet to either get serious or disband.

2/4/2009:   Today, commenting on Obama's efforts in dissolving Guantanamo and working with nations around the globe rather than invading them, Cheney said...

Who cares what Cheney said? Like he's any kind of expert on how to secure our nation. Thanks to him and Bush, the world is militarily and financially out of control. Screw him.

2/4/2009:   ("Of the minute" because congressional Republicans are spewing idiocies at a breathtaking rate.)

In response to a stimulus bill that attempts to create jobs but doesn't slash taxes on the rich, John McCain said: "We can either fight the Democrat proposals, which would increase the deficit incredibly and mortgage our children's futures and not beneficially stimulate our economy, which we will do, in many respects. But we have to have a proposal of our own."

I've read it, and yes, it does in fact include sections that will beneficially stimulate our economy. But it's the statement about mortgaging our children's future that I find most egregious. Who does Johnny think he is? He voted with Bush 95% of the time in the last eight years to mortgage our children's future to the absolute hilt and beyond, and now that Obama is trying desparately to save us from complete freaking ruin, Mr. McCain is suddently in a heat over our children's future. Dozens of TRILLIONS of dollars in giveaways as the Bush administration wrapped up, and dozens of TRILLIONS of dollars wasted invading Iraq, giving out no-bid contracts and emergency loans, and the interest on the Iraq war debt. What complete crap. The GOP just wants to make some useless noise so they don't seem completely irrelevant. Which they are, by the way.

Mr. McCain, stop being a putz. Get out of the way. We would like to have our country back, and we are trying to pry your nasty, scaly, whithered, pale, cold hands off of it. Just back off, will ya?

2/4/2009:   So I just got done talking to a good friend of mine, a good family man, about finances, the economy, healthcare, that sort of thing. And it got me to thinking on the way home about something that occurred to me early on but that I haven't heard anyone discuss yet.

Why not tell banks that receive bailout funds that they must convert subprime foreclosures into no-deposit rental agreements with the rent payment being the beginning payment of the loan? Everyone's a winner. The renter stays in their home at an affordable price, the bank is getting money instead of sitting on an empty property -- everyone's a winner.

Again, it requires that subprime loans be converted to *something* that allows the homeowner to stay in their home. Perhaps you do that for only one year. And during that time the bank can still show the house in order to sell it. If the house sells, the people living there get a fraction of whatever equity they had prior to foreclosure back again and they have 30 days to leave.

If people aren't scrambling to get public assistance for food and shelter because they are using every last penny to change housing, that would provide some economic relief, and the ability to stay in their homes would give the nation a sense of stability that is sorely lacking right now. Just an idea.

There were never any WMDs in Iraq.
No links to Al Qaeda.
No ties to 9/11.
Bush, Cheney, and Condie lied to you.
You ignored the facts.
You re-elected a liar and a murderer by proxy.
But now it's time to show your support for the troops.

2/3/2009:   The GOP has decided to hold up portions of the stimulus bill to public scrutiny in order to tarnish the Democrats. As usual. Now don't get me wrong, I honestly believe that such a critical bill should focus entirely on creating jobs, raising taxes on the rich, or cutting taxes on the middle class and poor. If you can create jobs bolstering our infrastructure or in public works, then all the better.

So I agree that, while I'm sure are worthwhile, don't have to do with shoring up the economy and need to be removed:

And then there's pure crap like:

But I can easily see where the following will require that people get hired in order to do the work being financed:

So the GOP protesteth too much, in my humble opinion. Yes, the bill needs work. Yes, this is one bill that should focus on economic solutions. But to simply give out $2 trillion in "emergency loans", $13 trillion in "floating loans", and $700 billion in "bailouts" before Obama could rip the reins out of George's hands, and then to turn around and screech about $2.5 trillion in addendums to the bill that, while not job-focused, are arguably worthwhile, is so damned hypocritical of the GOP.

And typical. Hypocritcal and typical of the Repubicants (misspelling intended).

2/1/2009:   I don't make resolutions on New Year's Day.

So it's a truly rare gift when you're presented with a chance to take a really huge mistake and make it right.

When life hands you such an opportunity, then, as is often the case with righting wrongs, there will be unpleasant repercussions. That's the nature of mistakes, of poor choices, of justice delayed. But it is the measure of the person as to whether they choose to embrace the repercussions, stand up straight and take responsibility, and do what's right.

It's an opportunity, and again, a rare one, to reach back and say, "That thing I did, I did wrong. I'm sorry for the consequences. I'm a smarter, better person than I was then, and I will do the right thing now to the best of my ability."

2/1/2009:   Not only did Paulson give $700 billion in bailout money to major banks, 90% of whom were not holding toxic loans and didn't need the money, he did so without restriction or oversight.

If you're a Republican: Oversight, n., watchful and responsible care; regulatory supervision, as in congressional.

It would have been nice to place restrictions on the use of that money to make sure it was used in a manner that would benefit banks who needed it, for the purpose of shoring up the reliability of the financial institution and allowing for the relief of troubled borrowers. It would also have been good if they'd required them to use the money to employ Americans.

Oh, you haven't heard? Yeah, while the banks were being showered with gifts from the federal reserve, they were also bucking to have the limits on their H1B visas lifted. They wanted to lay off as many Americans as possible and hire foreign workers to take their jobs.

Let me rephrase that so you get the full flavor: You gave them your hard-earned tax money so the could turn around, fire as many of you as they could get away with, and give that tax money to foreign workers in the form of paychecks and to their chief officers in the form of fat, undeserved bonuses.

Don't you just love Paulson? Isn't he just the biggest, most lovable bastard you've ever had rip you off? Emphasis on "bastard", of course...

2/1/2009:   I came across a site where people were arguing the finer points of Fermi's Paradox. For those that haven't heard of this, Wikipedia describes it thus: "The extreme age of the universe and its vast number of stars suggest that if the Earth is typical, extraterrestrial life should be common." Discussing this proposition over lunch in 1950, the physicist Enrico Fermi questioned why, if a multitude of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations exist in the Milky Way galaxy, evidence such as spacecraft or probes are not seen.

I wrote my suggested solution to Fermi's paradox:

Basically what I was trying to say was, the reason we haven't actually communicated with space aliens is because, at the stage they would be at in their evolution, they would see us as half-baked, not yet done, primitive. As soon as the dominant species is machines, earth will be ready to join the galactic community.

At least, that's my theory. And yes, we will merge with our machines. Don't believe me? Look up "The Singularity." I was opining something like this back in college and all my computer buddies scoffed at me, saying that machines would never be truly intelligent.

They're not laughing now.

2/1/2009:  

Tuvolu
Maldives
New Orleans
The Keys
Tobago
Venice

These are all island states or coastal cities that will disappear in the next 50 to 100 years because of the rise of the oceans due to the melting of glaciers, Greenland's ice cap, and the south pole ice cap. The Maldives has even been in the news looking for a large amount of land that they can purchase and make into a new nation for themselves before their island turns into an Atlantis.

The following people voted against the Constitution, against the Fourth Amendment, against your rights, freedoms, liberties, and protections. A version of the FISA reform bill that grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that broke the law at the president's behest and gives the president the ability to grant immunity without oversight or further authorization, has passed the United States House of Representatives on Friday, June 20th, 2008. These are the people that voted for that measure. Included among them are Democrats that have betrayed their constituencies, including my own Jerry McNerney. Let us not forget these traitors at election time.